This invention relates to baking pans and more particularly to such pans as are used in commercial establishments for baking bread or similar bakery products, and wherein said pans are usually secured in a side-by-side relationship to provide a pan set for baking a multiplicity of baked products at one time.
While many characteristics of a baking pan would be the same whether such pan was to be used in the home or in a commercial bakery, there are certain production techniques and health regulations involved in commercial establishments that require structural criteria for a commercial baking pan that is not necessary in a home use baking pan. Such structural criteria would include, among other things, sufficient mechanical strength and stability to withstand the abuses of continual and repeated handling, both by hand and by automatic equipment, as well as the elimination or minimization of seams, abutments, projections and other configurations in pan structure where baking residue can collect and which resists removal in washing.
As to mechanical strength and stability, this normally involves increasing pan corner strength sufficiently to maintain structural integrity in spite of abuses attending stacking, conveying, de-panning and other such production line operations, and also includes providing suitable securement means of a set of pans, one-to-the-others, sufficient to maintain the integrity of the entire pan set in withstanding the abuses of the production equipment. Such mechanical strength and stability must be achieved while making the pan sets as lightweight as possible, thereby providing for easier handling, minimizing pan heat-up and baking time, and reducing the material cost of the pans.
As to the sanitation aspects of commercial baking pans, it is not sufficient that the baking surface of the pan be readily cleanable but also that it be maintained clean between bakes. This requires that not only must the interior of the pan be free of soil holding configurations, but also that the exterior of the pan which is nested within that pan be free of said holding configurations. It is clear that when pans or pan sets are stacked and stored between bakes that the nesting of pans within pans offers the opportunity for contamination of a pan interior by dislodging residue from the exterior surface of the adjacent overlying pan.
The commercial need for adequate pan corner strength and suitable inside-outside pan sanitation features has not been adequately met by pan suppliers. While baking pan construction has been modified to attempt to solve these problems the modifications have usually resulted in extremely high pan cost, impaired baking characteristics, or structures not suited to the abuse of automatic production equipment.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of this invention to overcome these disadvantages as well as provide a baking pan having the advantages before described.